Stephen Dean: Volta

Art and sports merge this spring at PAMM with The World’s Game: Fútbol and Contemporary Art, an art-based exhibition on the subject of soccer, or fútbol, and its interactions with societies around the world. Go behind-the-scenes with French-American artist Stephen, whose film Volta (2002-03) is part of the exhibition.

In Volta, Dean blurs the boundaries between experimental film and sociological documentary, focusing on a massive crowd at a soccer stadium in Brazil. As the mob’s mood builds to a wild pitch, Dean’s camera captures moments of beauty and order arising spontaneously from the overwhelming chaos. Volta climaxes with the sight of gigantic, homemade flags drifting slowly across the ocean of spectators in vast fields of color that create graceful counterpoints to the mass display of frenetic activity.